Eli Wallach: The Good, the Bad and the Brilliant

As Tuco Ramí­rez, the malevolent but clownish bandit who tangles with a bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) and a cold-blooded killer (Lee Van Cleef) over a cache of Confederate gold, Wallach gave a performance that was lauded as “inspired” by critic Roger Ebert, who wrote that “Wallach took this low-rent role seriously and made something evocative out of it.”

Wallach, who died on June 24 at age 98 in New York City, was so good as Tuco that it’s easy to forget that he appeared in 167 other roles in movies and television, in a career that spanned six decades. In classics such as Baby Doll (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Misfits (1961) and How to Steal a Million (1966), he was an exquisitely skilled actor who stood toe-to-toe with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, from Karl Malden to Clark Gable to Peter O’Toole. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored Wallach with an honorary Oscar in 2010, it noted that he was “the quintessential chameleon, effortlessly inhabiting a wide range of characters, while putting his inimitable stamp on every role.”

Here are some facts about Wallach:

Wallach dreamed of becoming a teacher and earned a master’s degree in education at City College of New York before he was bitten by the acting bug at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

After serving in World War II as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, Wallach returned to New York and began a career as a stage actor. He won a Tony Award for his performance in the 1951 Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo, in which he acted alongside Maureen Stapleton. He once told the New York Times that he did spaghetti westerns mostly to make money so that he could afford to do plays.